The Real
by Mister Vix
Summary: The real thing is always what we wait for. Even when it has left us behind.


**The Real

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Disclaimer:  
I do not own Petshop of Horrors.

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Author's Notes:  
One-shot fun. Set after the end of the manga. I suppose.

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A light was flicked on. He blinked a few times, startled by the sudden change, the sudden banishment of the darkness. Blue eyes widened a little, hopefully, at the footsteps that echoed throughout the hallway just outside his room; a trembling smile pulled at pale, dry lips. He shifted a little where he sat on his bed, unaware of how one hand idly toyed with the corner of the sheets. 

"Hey," the woman said, the woman with the sad eyes. His smile remained, wavering but not quite faltering, still hopeful. He looked so hopeful. Always... "How ya been?"

"Okay," he responded, his voice quiet. "I...I guess." She managed a smile for his sake, a small one.

"You're looking better than last time," the woman murmured, and he nodded vehemently. Pausing to re-capture his balance, he looked up at her, shoulders slightly hunched, hands gripping the side of the bed tightly. The way he sat, legs curled up underneath of him, that fragile smile and those bright eyes, reminded the sad woman of a child, waiting. Waiting for something they knew, in their naïve and innocent heart, would come to them, were they patient long enough. Were they good long enough.

"I haven't done much," he informed her, and now his smile brightened proudly. "Haven't done anything like...that...again." She placed a light hand on his shoulder, managed to keep the tears from falling. She would wait until she was out of the room. Only one time had he seen her actually cry, and he'd been so upset...she couldn't upset him, she couldn't. Never. Couldn't stand to let anything mar that hopeful expression, that look of always waiting patiently for something that he didn't realize would never come. Like a child he was determined, and no one could change his mind about anything he thought.

"Good," she whispered. "That's good. Remember that you have to be good. Don't forget, okay?" He nodded vehemently again, and she maintained his rather delicate balance.

"I won't forget," he replied, watching the ground without really being aware of it. He looked up at her again, peering at her through a few strands of gold; his hair'd started to come undone. "H...how's Chris? Is he alright?"

"Yeah," she replied, "he's doing great. We're certain he'll get up the courage to say something one of these days; he's come close. I know it." Chris had moved away three years ago, to some obscure relation's home. It hurt, that he'd turned his back on his older brother, but she could understand. She supposed she could understand. She moved her hand to brush away the strands of blonde, but he flinched away, and she immediately withdrew a safe distance. His smile vanished completely for a moment, and he fought it back into place with some amount of difficulty.

"I—I'm s...sorry," he stumbled a little over his words. "Th-that was...n't..." He sighed and stopped talking, staring down at his hands clenching the sheets. "I'm k-kinda tired, Jill...o...okay?"

"Sure, Leon," she replied sadly, standing up. "I'll come back in a week to visit you again." He didn't look up as she left, already lost to the world, in a fantasy all his own. A dream that could never be real for him, because everything had been taken away so suddenly, leaving him no chance to regain his bearings.

Once she was outside of the little room, the little cell, Jill let loose her restrained sobs, clenching her teeth and slamming her fist uselessly against the wall. The man in the long white coat didn't look at her; he was used to this reaction. She always did the same thing after visiting her old partner. "Goddamnit, D, why'd you have to do this to him?!" And then she left, without another word to any of the staff. They were all accustomed to her visits; she'd been coming here for nearly three years, after all. Ever since Leon Orcot had been admitted as a patient in the mental hospital, no longer capable of keeping himself alive in the real world. He was always waiting for someone who would never come back, waiting to see a slender, elegant Chinese man come strolling in like some sort of royalty, chiding him for the state he'd gotten into. He was always waiting to hear the unheard laughter as a young, still-silent Chris played with the unnatural animals, uncaring of what they really were.

Leon's decline had not been immediate. He'd spent the first few years trying to get his life back to normal, trying to pick up like the petshop had never existed. But there is something to be said of a kami's influence; once one is caught in the webs of their lives, one can never be freed. Leon had been tangled up so thickly he was nearly choking by the time D left, and quite suddenly he had no foundation anymore. Once the fourth year since the Count's departure had rolled about, the man had been falling into a state of off-kilter depression and frequent memory loss. He never outright attempted suicide, but he would stop eating, stop sleeping, for great periods of time, and that took its toll. Finally, friends and family had been forced to relent, to give up on trying to save him from his own mental erosion, and he'd been put away somewhere safe for himself. Family had since stopped visiting, friends had lost time or had moved away, and now only Jill frequented the narrow hallway and the stark, mostly-empty room.

Alone, and often in the dark—it was, supposedly, easier to keep him calm in the darkness—Leon was left with his thoughts, such as they were. He was alone in the world. The one who had been tethered so deeply by a kami, and had been pushed away in the end, left behind to choke on the end of his rope, to claw at the collar without relief. But in his desperately grasping, searching mind, the abandonment was only temporary—he believed that D would return to claim him yet. The years passed didn't matter. The finality of their last encounter didn't matter. The kami could not just leave him here; he simply had had to wait long enough, behave well enough, and the Chinese man would return and draw Leon somewhere away with him.

The blonde shuddered to think what D might find; that was the most common cause of his occasional outbursts. He knew that he looked but a shambles of his former self, paled, weakened, unsteady. But it didn't matter—did it? Would D take him back as he was? Would he accept this pitiful, shattered thing?

The darkness was reassuring. In it he could watch and listen to the mysterious phantoms of the past, rarely blinking as he relived old incidents. Tears falling unnoticed, smile one of a forgotten creature, he would remain motionless. In Leon's world, things were as they were meant to be. There was no treacherous Q-chan-grandfather-thing to snatch his Count away. There was no psychotic father to cause chaos. There was only him, D, and Chris, and the people who made sense—and there was no _kami_ stuff, and he and D weren't so stupid as they'd been. They were as they were meant to be, together. It was the blonde man's little reality, all his own.

In the returned dark, Leon felt his claimed weariness finally starting to drag his eyelids down. He made a few, fitful attempts to combat it, but it was all in vain, and he was soon forced to surrender, curling up where he was. He was nearly asleep when the soft sound came to his ears, a light scratching at the door to his room. It clicked, the lock snapping in a way it wasn't supposed to, and was slowly pushed open. Leon jerked upright, staring. The figure was silhouetted by the hallway light, and he couldn't get a good look at them.

"Oh, my dear Detective," murmured a cool, calm, familiar voice. With a little gasp, the blonde tried to get to his feet and nearly fell. "It seems it was foolish of me to trust you to be able to continue on your own." The figure shifted; gold and purple eyes glimmered enigmatically from a perfect ivory face, full lips in a little smirk, raven hair glossy in the harsh light from the hall.

"D..." he whimpered, crying, smiling. He reached out, begging for the kami to come closer, afraid the man wasn't real. D obliged, his slippered feet making no noise as he approached, stopping when he was directly in front of Leon. With a little sob, the blonde grabbed the Chinese man, pulling the slender body against his and holding on tightly. Amused, D placed his arms lightly around Leon's wasted-away form.

"My dear Leon," the kami murmured, "come. Come with me, my pet. It was a mistake to leave you behind." Leon nodded desperately, unable to let go, lest this apparition vanish and leave him again to despair. D's smirk broadened, as he gently stroked the man's back and shoulders. "Yes... Come."

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Jill had been working in the L.A.P.D. for a long time now. She'd encountered some pretty sick stuff. But she was reduced to vomiting and wailing at what she encountered at the source of the frantic call. 

Her heart had lept into her throat as soon as she'd learned the location of the call; the mental hospital. She'd known what was coming. But why like this?

How bitter, that this was reminiscent of all the twisted cases Leon had linked to D. "Well, Orcot, it looks like you were wrong...it wasn't D..." Leon's room, out of all the rooms in the entire building, had been broken into. The man had been slitted open and had his insides turned out. There looked to've not even been a struggle. But of all, out of all the horror of the scene, the thing that really clung to Jill's mind, the thing that would haunt her for the rest of her life until its eventual end, was the expression he'd worn. A smile.

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"Hmm. Humans are quite foolish creatures, don't you think?" 

"Mmm...I suppose so..."


End file.
